Archive for June 3rd, 2009
CSA wants kids criminalized for smoking
Dave Bryant, the long-time president of the Ontario convenience store association and long-time buddy with Canada’s big tobacco, is again trying to blame anyone but the tobacco industry for youth tobacco use. Again he has asked government to criminalize youth posession and use of tobacco industry products. Although there is no scientific evidence that possession laws are effective in reducing youth tobacco use.
Why should youth be punished for their addiction – addiction as a ‘replacement customer’ for adults that die from their deadly addiction? If we criminalize tobacco industry products we openly blame teens for an addiction and epidemic that they didn’t create. Criminalizing tobacco again falls right into the tobacco industry’s ploys that their products are “adult”. Why is the CSA deflecting blame to kids? Why is the CSA always playing the mouthpiece for big tobacco in Canada?
